Subversion
by KristieConspiracy
Summary: "Anything you say can and will be held against you by whosoever is allocated to write out your sentence. You will not have a trial. You have no right to an attorney. You have lost your claim to freedom." Dramione AU. Muggles rule the world, wizards are subservient, and Draco's never known what it is to be free. Rated T for language.
1. How It Always Ends

**Challenges: **Screaming Faeries _Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge_ on HPFC; Philaria's _85 Shades of AU Competition (Draco Malfoy) _on HPFC.

**Characters:** Draco Malfoy.

**Prompts: **13\. **Uranos**: _Write something completely AU._

10\. **Voldemort** _never existed _/ 19. **Alternate**_ history _/ 28. **Hogwarts** _was never founded _/ 32. **Slave **/ 49. **Subservient** wizards / 59. **Rebellion**_ or revolution_ / 61. **Muggles** _rule the world_ / 64. **Runaway **/ 68. **Criminal**_ or fugitive._

**Word count: **2,029

**A/N: **The _85 Shades of AU Competition_ prompts will not be listed again, but they apply to the entire story. This is a massively AU story in which, among other things, history has been re-written, Draco Malfoy is the protagonist, and wizards are subservient to muggles.

* * *

London's skyline has long had the appearance of a grand Gothic style palace. Its' turrets are skyscrapers and the jagged form of Big Bens' clock tower, stabbing the sky far above the bleak black line of the horizon. Understandably, perhaps, it seems memorable and impressive, the sort of setting one recalls for its grandeur and uniquely distinct shapes.

England is ruled by a monarchy that, for the longest time, ruled figuratively. The family were more an image than anything else, designed to stand over the people as their symbol. Their home lay in the unique city of London, and they had been aware of the wizarding portion of their population since long before the founding of the Ministry of Magic in the early seventeenth century. They'd kept the existence of such powerful individuals a secret from the large majority of their subjects.

George II, who succeeded his father of the same name, was not pleased with the lessened power of the monarchy under his predecessors reign. Desperate to prove that his family was worth keeping in power and the Prime Minister secondary in every sense of the word, he spent years plotting what he called _the ideal course of action_. Finally, in 1751, he decided quite abruptly that his plans were complete, were finalised. In a decade-long fit of fear-fuelled pique, he did something that could never be undone.

He revealed the existence of the wizarding world to the masses.

For a good thirty years, the two populations co-existed in a rather strained harmony. Wizards opened their doors to muggles, creating a sense of unity between the separate groups that should have spearheaded the creation of a new era, one destined to succeed against all odds.

Then the first wizard died, stabbed to death by a muggle lord. The claim was that the magical person attacked first, using his magic to threaten the powerless lord.

The tenuous balance between the groups shattered; the world fell apart. England, divided between those with magic and those without, collapsed into the chaos of civil war.

Eventually, after almost a decade of continuous combat, the nearly eradicated magical population collapsed under the violent oppression of the muggles who so outnumbered them. The then king, declaring the genocide of such 'usefully gifted people' a 'crime against God Himself', arranged what he deemed to be the next best thing.

The entirety of wizarding England was stripped of rank, title and wealth. Each and every witch and wizard was made subservient, their wands taken and their lives ted to lines of the non-magical people who had so easily thwarted them. In the future, the oppressive mode of ruling would become the accepted norm throughout Europe and its' colony nations: Scotland, France, Canada, Australia. Nowhere was safe, not really. Every magical person across the world was at risk of falling victim to the regime, though some nations less so than others. Less populated areas would become a haven to magical people and to those who sympathised with them, but that was the best that could be expected. Facilities designed to trap magical individuals, prisons by another name, halls lined with cells that would encase anyone the government put in them, from children to old men.

The rest, as they say, is history.

* * *

"I want my son back. You don't understand, he's just - just misguided. I promise, he's not going to make trouble."

"Mrs Malfoy, you're lying to me. You don't think your son is harmless at all, do you?"

"I -"

"Leave her be."

"Lucius, there's really no need -"

"Please, Narcissa, do be quiet for a moment. Narcissa, for all her perceived _faults_ in your eyes, is a mother, first and foremost. Her priority is our sons' safety, perhaps understandably so, thanks to how we're treated -"

"Lucius, not the best time!"

"I know, I know, do be quiet. Regardless, I can promise you that she has no idea where he has gone. Draco does not trust us as his parents. He believes we would conspire against him."

"Conspire? I'm afraid I don't quite know what you mean."

"Report any eye-opening experiences to your people, the _muggles_. If he begins to question the way things are, then you're to find out. As soon as possible."

"It's your role to do so, Mister Malfoy. Of course you would tell us. You would never risk being locked up in a cell for your sons temper tantrum."

"He's almost seventeen. Almost an adult in the magical world."

"Just as well, then, that magical people are nothing more than abnormal samples of humanity."

"We are _not_ abnormal."

"We'll see, Mister Malfoy. We'll see."

* * *

The night, in typical English fashion, was dreary. Rain fell heavily on anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the downpour, the torrent falling hard enough to bruise any exposed skin. Streetlights gave some depth to the enduring darkness, the only other punctuation coming from uncovered windows hanging like mocking echoes of stars far above the sidewalk.

These lights caught a sort of bustling nightlife that seemed to exist only as they slipped through the spotlights cast upon the pavement, ceasing to exist in the shadows. These figures, who looked like humans trapped in varying stages of misery and their own deaths, seemed to prefer the shadows. Every hunched figure, moving swiftly and gracelessly, crept as closely as possible to the edges of the light, without stepping into the shadows right away. Hiding in the dark might be what they had to do to survive, but it was also a crime.

And, Draco knew, they did; they all did. Every person in that street was afraid of the light. They had all been bred to believe in their inferiority, to believe that it was a crime for someone guilty of possessing their 'defects' to be seen. There wasn't a person in that street who thought they had any value as an individual, as a person. Those who dared to believe as much were crushed and locked away or, more frequently, killed, made an example of. Confidence was bred out of the people who really needed it.

Now that he thought of confidence, the whimpering recaptured his attention, calling him from the window. He turned to the child to offer what he could in the way of comfort, wrapping his thin arms around her tiny form and rubbing her back as gently as he could, so as not to disturb the bruises. The worn violet fabric of her ancient dress, two sizes too large for her miniature malnourished frame, caught on his pale fingers and made them itch horribly. He supposed that the coarseness must be something she had adjusted to, because even when she cried, she showed no sign of discomfort.

"H-how are you so strong?"

He gazed at his reflection in the mirror behind her head, his eyes a hard, careless gray in the dimly lit box of a room. His almost white hair was limp against his skull, making his sharp features seem sicker than they were, but also much more determined. The little girl, whose name he didn't even know, was convinced of an illusion. He didn't see the brave, strong man she apparently did.

Why shouldn't she be convinced, though? After all, everyone else seemed to see it more than the reality. He knew he would continue to pretend that this thing was real, this facade he had created. He couldn't afford to sacrifice it, not if he wanted to follow through on his plans. If they wanted to believe some kind of happiness was possible in their kind, so be it. But the truth was cruel.

As if any wizard of almost seventeen years of age was _okay_ in the world that had been created for him and his like.

"I know that I want to live," he told her, finally, his hoarse voice stabbing through the half light. "I know who I respect, and I'm willing to do whatever I can to earn the same treatment."

"Respect?"

"You're old enough to know what that means. Don't pretend otherwise."

It's - it's when people look up to you, isn't it? When they don't w-walk all over you while they try to prove a point."

He lifted one corner of his mouth in a mockery of a smile, nodding once. "How badly does it hurt? Scale of one to ten."

"F-four."

He didn't believe that for a second. The bruises coloured her skin from when she had been grabbed quite violently, cuts remaining from when her non-magical owner had cast her through a window, and more bruises from when she had hit the ground on her side. She must have been in agony.

"I can teach you how to heal today," he said quietly, "you and the others. Come on. It's time to go to class."

_Class_ was an overstatement of what it was. In reality, it was a small group of wizards and witches, all under the age of thirteen. His role was to be their tutor and role model, to teach them to control their magic before they killed someone during a rebellious fit.

A necessary precaution, and the muggles were idiots not to see it. Throughout history, there had been dozens of simple, life-ending mistakes that could have been easily avoided with a little training. There was the incident when the daughter of magical author Beatrix Bloxam had blown up her muggles' residence. Leopoldina Smethwyck famously killed a muggle boy when she attempted to charm a broomstick to fly in an attempt to impress him. Sacharissa Tugwood wiped out half of Suffolk in a freak accident at barely twelve years old, taking out two magical families and one hundred and thirty-eight muggle homes. They needed training, but they wouldn't get it. The muggles were simply illogically afraid of some kind of revolution.

A revolution they desperately needed if the magical population was to survive at all.

* * *

It was cold. The rain was still heavy, pressing in on him with a kind of suffocating omnipresence. He was drenched to the bone, shivering as violently as a child left in a freezer, but he couldn't risk the time it'd take to stop and cast a warming charm. He _had_ to lead the bastards away from the makeshift class, even if it was just a sewer. It was him, after all, that got them caught when he approached their idiot parents for permission. They were just untrained wizards and witches who weren't trained to deal with the tortures the muggles would employ to protect their so-called haven.

Of course, he wasn't trained either, and as far as he was concerned they'd made a massive mistake in turning him in. _Especially_ during a class. Did the overly trusting fools honestly believe that the muggle forces wouldn't harm their children, just because they were muggleborn brats? He doubted it. Even a rock wasn't that dumb.

Better that he deal with the abuse than some innocent seven year old.

The brick wall loomed before him without warning, at the exact same time as the clock struck midnight. It was the fifth of June, and he could feel the cruel electric shock of a taser in his back. Falling to his knees, he craned his head around to fix his burning eyes, watering from the pain, on his attacker. There was nothing clear about them at all, just indistinct black shadows blurred by the rain, merging into the darkness like a sneaking spy. They didn't even have faces, keeping them hidden behind thick balaclava. Only their eyes marked them as human at all, the same cruel carelessness showing them as a group.

"You're under arrest for crimes against the non-magical government. You are accused the practice of magic, and of attempting to teach magic to others. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you by whosoever is allocated to write out your sentence. You will not have a trial. You have no right to an attorney. You have lost your claim to freedom."

_Happy seventeenth birthday, Draco_. _Time to say hello to your end._


	2. Prison by Any Other Name

**Challenges: **DobbyRocksSocks _Harry Potter Chapter Competition_ on HPFC; Screaming Faeries' _Greek Mythology Mega Challenge_ on HPFC; butterflygirly99's _Prompts Mania Challenge_ on HPFC; CUtopia's _Tumblr Competition!_ on HPFC.

**Prompts: **Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, chapter 15 - The Forbidden Forest: _write about a punishment not fitting the crime. _(Bonus prompt #1-sugar)

48\. Andromeda: _Write about being imprisoned for something that wasn't their fault._

Dialogue 14: _"You cannot be serious." _**/** Dialogue 15. _"That's child's play."_ **/** Random 4: _Candid._ **/** Random 9: _Grins._

Lovely photo of a couple standing together in front of a fir forest. ( uploaded_ )

**Word count: **2,435

* * *

He'd had the dream before, and he could recognise it in an instant. Perhaps it had evolved as he aged, but the setting never changed: trees stretched for miles and miles in every direction, tall fir trees spread as far as the eye could see. They stood tall and dark and green against the bright grey of the cloud covered sky.

He knew it was a dream because of an obscure trick he'd taught himself years ago, before he had fled a life of servitude in favour of a life wasted in hiding. The enchanting taste of sugar tickled his taste buds, the flavour glistening and trying to distract him from illusion, to call him from this unknown realm, where he watched himself as though viewing another person entirely. That platinum blonde hair was unmistakeable, though, even from behind. He was the taller half of the couple present, though the other was, of course, just a woman, an older version of a child he'd only ever met in his mind.

As he watched, she murmured something quietly, her exact words lost in the dull cacophony of the unnatural façade he'd come up with. The other version of him laughed, a sound alien to his own ears, and offered his arm to his companion. She took it, resting her head on his shoulder as she recited more lost words, verses that would never be heard. At the same time, her long mess of hair, barely a shade lighter than unroasted coffee beans, sprang free of the knot atop her head, cascading down over and past the soft curve of her shoulders.

And then someone opened their moth, and then they were screaming, she, he, was screaming, the entire world was entrenched in the shrieks of the dying and the long dead, and a voice yelled over it all: "Wake up and take a proper look!"

The uneven bed of pine needles and jagged rocks became coarser and harder to lay still on. Draco restrained himself for the time it took to count out fifteen seconds. In that time, he allowed himself to mourn the loss of his dream, though he knew it wouldn't be the last time, but _especially_ to the screaming that apparently awaited him in the waking world.

A new freak must have been caught and charged, for that sound to exist outside the barred front of his cell. He grimaced, wishing for the sharp, sweet tang of sugar of his dreams to replace the unclean roughness he could taste inside his mouth. The memory of why he'd chosen such an anchor was poorly repressed, scrabbling for purchase in the part of his mind he paid attention to. Somewhat desperately, he tried to shove some distractions before it: the childs' horribly itchy dress pressed against his hand, the electric experience of being tasered, the taste of an apple he'd managed to steal a few weeks earlier.

_It wasn't working._

The remembered scent of lilacs and rosemary trembled beneath his flared nostrils. His fingers itched, desperate to hold a weapon, _any_ weapon, and the breeze was painfully fresh against his cheek.

"There is absolutely no possibility that you are still asleep after that chaos, Malfoy."

Eager for the distraction, he jerkily swung his legs over the edge of his bunk, jumping to his feet. "What would you know, Zabini?"

"Temper, temper. I'll tell you what I've learned after being here for years, though, for a price."

Draco let his eyebrows shoot up, apparently amused by this proposal. He had assumed a position beside the other wizards' bed, and was tall enough to rest his pointed chin on his arms, folded on the edge of the lumpy mattress, granting him full visibility of his cellmate.

Blaise Zabini's features were dark and sharp, his cheekbones slicing through the shadows. His mother was passed from one owner to another, based on whether or not she was pregnant. He had three siblings, one of them an older sister he hadn't seen since his sixth birthday, and the other two younger brothers. One of them was dead, the other kept in a rare fit of pique from his muggle parent. Zabini was a few months younger than Draco, and it showed in his careless immaturity, which hadn't been changed by four years in prison. He hated anyone who wasn't as good as him, and that meant that Blaise Zabini would have no issues leaving someone to die: after all, everyone who had ever existed was his inferior.

Draco couldn't stand him.

"What price, Zabini?"

"You owe me a favour."

_That was it? _"What kind of favour? Because if you want eyeliner, you're better off asking an actual woman, Zabini."

"Patience. Move it, I need to see."

Draco shrugged and obliged, shifting closer to the bars. He could hear Zabini as he moved behind him, but he was more interested in examining the prison for the thousandth time ten days earlier.

The building was windowless. New prisoners - always magical, or at least suspected - were brought through to a checkpoint with a sack over their head, blocking their vision and muffled sounds to a point that it was near impossible to effectively interpret them. By the time it was removed, there was no way to tell where one had come from, where outside was, or even where one was in relation to anything. The area, all grey concrete, gave the impression of being deep underground - but it could just have easily been a thousand feet in the air in a windowless skyscraper. The guards knew, but if anyone asked anything, then the questioner would be subjected to the same humiliating punishment as those charged with using magic, intentionally or not, on muggles: an iron mask jammed over their mouth, left there until they starved or someone thought to remove it.

The second possibility was so rare, it was used as a joke among the guards.

"Look at their arms," Zabini instructed, meaning the screaming man and his prescribed guards. "Watch."

The new prisoner screamed and fought, but Draco saw the exact moment when his time ran out. One of the guards passed another a tiny weapon, something that looked almost benevolent compared to the batons, blades and firearms they carried for so-called 'crowd control' in the prison. It didn't look longer than Draco's index finger, this thin plastic tube, but as they reaised it, something extra caught in the light. He felt his eyes widen, wrapped his fingers around the bars before him. "You cannot be serious. What are they - they cannot -"

Zabini's cold hand came down on his shoulder, his thick accent a candid, dismissive whisper in Draco's ear. "Don't be obtuse, Malfoy. You know these muggles are pretty much evil. They would never hesitate to condemn anyone more powerful than them. Certainly haven't so far."

It was fuel for nightmares, watching someone dressed in rags struggle against captors all in black. Gloved hands wrapped around each of his limbs, restraining him slowly: right leg, left arm, right hand. Finally, the last hand stretched forward, plunging the needle into the manic wizards exposed neck.

He went still.

The whisper of Draco's cellmate was so dreadfully eerie, he knew he would never forget it. After all, it was so well timed that he wondered if the guards had said it before:

"Childs play."

"What did he do?"

He could practically feel the grin of the dark skinned companion, the sensation of the hairs on the back of his neck standing up more than enough to give away the sadistic glee of the younger man. "Oh, that?

"That's just the punishment for falling in love with one of their precious _muggles_."

"There's a punishment for that?"

"You should see the punishment for muggles who produce wizards."

* * *

Perhaps the muggles weren't willing to use the term 'prison' when they named the institution that would hold _abnormals_ for decades to come. It didn't make it any less of a prison, and whoever planned the ritualistic routines that the occupants completed went out of their way to emphasise that. The cafeteria was completely grey, lined with cold stone as though conforming to a dress code that seemed to cover everything, from the inmates to the walls.

Draco poked at whatever he'd been given to eat, thinking wistfully of the picnic in his dream the night before. His companion was a lot of things, but a cook she was not. Everything she would lay out for the two to share would be dressed in plastic, bought from a store.

He'd never heard her speak, but he had an idea of what her laugh would sound like. He'd pieced it together in his daydreams when the days were too grim to deal with, a combination of everything from the fragment of a muggle girls' laugh he'd overheard once, to the quietly distinguished chuckle of his pureblood mother.

The girl had been a constant in his dreams and nightmares alike, for as long as he could remember. The first recollection was from around his fourth birthday, an image of a child with an air of smug glee about her. She hadn't said any words - she never did - and he had only seen her face for a moment in the dream: a glimpse of wide chocolate eyes, which she cast to the ground as she pressed her hands to her lips, squashing the laughter that sought to escape. In that first dream, he'd watched as she played with the other, happier, version of him, and for the first time in his life, he'd felt safe. It was strongest when her tiny fingers brushed against his.

When he'd awoken from that dream, he'd asked where she was. His father had hit him, annoyed at his childish naïveté. "You're dreaming, boy. Stop trying to lie to yourself: you know she is no more real than any chance of anyone ever being your friend."

A cruel thing to tell a child, but Lucius had been trying to protect his son from the disappointment of loneliness, Draco knew that now. At the time, though, he'd wept where he thought no one could see. Then he'd gone to sleep and it had started all over again. The beginning of a ritual that recurred every time he fell asleep.

_God, I wish I'd just once seen her face properly._

Malfoy."

"What?" he snapped, glancing towards the guard who beckoned him over, the black clothing making the man nothing more than an ominous shadow against the wall. Beside him, though, was something Draco had never expected to see, not while he was awake.

Her long mess of hair, coated in dirt and grime, sprang free of the knot atop her head, falling in a matted mess over and past the curve of her shoulders, held stiffly and jumpily. Maybe he'd never seen her face up close, even after all these years, but he knew it nonetheless, those wide brown orbs, filled with knowledge and secrets just as familiar as his own - maybe more so, as mirrors were scarce on the run. He rose out of his chair slowly, his disgusting meal left to rot on the table, something that was honestly the best thing he could do with it. His gaze never left her face, and though he wouldn't know it until she mentioned it much later, the contact brought a spark to his. It was just a shimmer at the time, but all the same, the gleam caught her eye. She decided right then that she had to help him.

For better or worse.

"It's her."

* * *

The padding on the chairs was thin, worn down after years of irregular use and lack of care. Its' history was dotted sparsely through time, starting with its' creation to cover the base of the wooden chairs of the 'visitors room' in 1892. The fabric had once been a striped pattern, red and silver, but that had long since been worn back to dull variants of what was pretty much shades of gray. It wasn't comfortable at all.

"These are possibly the most uncomfortable chairs I've ever had the misfortune to sit in."

Draco stared at the woman opposite him, suspicious of her intent now that he'd had a minute to think. It didn't make sense that his dreams had reproduced a real face. It couldn't matter less to him that she was real - or at least it shouldn't. Now the idea that the muggles had a way to get inside his head was driving him mad. "What are you?"

She crossed, uncrossed and re-crossed her legs while he waited for an answer. "Why don't you sit down?"

He crossed his arms, leaning against the wall. "Look, lady, I don't have to listen to you. I don't have a right to speak out or complain or however they phrased it before, but that doesn't mean you have the right to speak to me. In fact, I was informed that I didn't have the right to an attorney. How are you here at all?"

She smiled, and though it barely touched her lips, her brown eyes turned bright and warm. He concentrated as best he could on maintaining his ice shield while she stood and moved closer to him, striding with all the stumbling grace of a woman who usually ran. "I have a deal with Filch."

"The Warden?" A man so frosty he made Draco look warm and loving, Argus Filch had stringy hair, mismatched eyes and a face so lined he looked like he'd be better placed in a display case than at his desk in his office. He was a success story, though, or so the muggles claimed: a Squib. A case of magic being completely crushed out of a magical line. He seemed to take great joy in punishing magical people. "_How_ the -"

"Language, please, Draco. Is it true you were charged with teaching children magic?"

He uncrossed his arms, pressing his flattened palms against the cold, cracked tiles behind him. "That's what they claim. The reality is, they detest me for my 'gifts', like they always do. Muggles always want what they don't have. What of it?"

She glanced back at the window, as if gauging her remaining time. Then she leaned closer, her lips brushing against his cheek as she took a breath to murmur. A thrill of energy shot down his spine, then turned to ice when he realised just what she was asking for:

"What do you know of the rebellion?"


	3. Accomplice

**Challenges:** MelodyPond77's _Long Haul Competition_ (week 1) on HPFC; Screaming Faeries' _Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge_ on HPFC; DobbyRocksSocks' _Harry Potter Chapter Competition_ on HPFC.

**Prompts: **17\. Hyperion: Write about Hermione Granger.

Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, chapter 1 - The Boy Who Lived: _write about the start of something._

**Word count: **3,259

* * *

"I'm not admitting anything until I know how you know who I am."

She had sighed at the time, but judging by her expression, this wasn't a surprising development. For an instant, Draco dreaded the doom that was predictability. He was sure he'd never really known her, not in reality. And, as she opened her mouth to speak, he knew he couldn't expect to.

"My name is Hermione, not that you really seem to care to know. You certainly didn't ask. Since you didn't, I can generalise: it's derived from the masculine name _Hermes_, the most well known thing to use the boys' name being the Messenger of the Greek Gods. Of course, since Greeks apparently suffered from severe misogyny - just read Homer, you'll see what I mean - they used _his_ status to create the meaning, and all derivatives thereof. _Messenger_. Imaginative, I know. And its' use is wonderfully ironic, if you happen to know everything about me. You really don't need to worry about that right now.

"I left my parents' house one day - don't look at me like that. Yes, I'm a runaway, but I won't be reported, not like you must have been. I ran, but not from your specific constraints - about a month ago now, at the start of autumn. Let's not discuss the implications of such a drastic change, particularly not one synchronous with the inception of the season that happens to be entirely associated with transformations, typically at the precipice of death, or leading to events indicative of such a final climax.

"Anyway, all symbolism aside, I left my parents residence at the start of autumn, before the rains got quite as heavy as they are now. I didn't exactly have anywhere to go at the time, as I was, at the time, an unknown entity, at least in the neighbourhood I grew up in. I was anonymous; people had no clue as to what I would look like. Most of them had, and still have, no idea that I exist - or exist_ed_ at all. I knew that, and I used it to my advantage. I gave the last name 'Puckle' when I had to , even going so far as to approach a register in order to attain some acceptable form of identification. I needed it to guarantee any means of living, particularly as I'm nearly eighteen now. I can't claim to be a minor forever, not when I'm staying _far _away from what I left.

"I was looking for work, and though I lack any qualifications, the first place I approached was willing to hire me. The owner must have felt sorry for me at the time, or maybe her cats took to me, and that made up her mind. I know I must have looked quite the poor excuse for a human being, half dead of starvation and exhaustion, practically living on hope. So I've assumed it was pity that got me a part-time job at the pet shop I went to. The important thing was that I could support myself.

"About a week and a half ago, I was feeding the animals, and someone came into the store. I must've been rather distracted, because next thing I knew, Mrs Figg, my boss, moved away from the counter to talk with the man. I moved back to the counter as soon as I realised, since the till had to be minded constantly. Bad neighbourhood. Of course they blamed magical people. Anyway, she kissed the man when I looked over, a man who pretty much looked like a taller version of Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame. After that, they began to chat.

"It wasn't much at first, nothing worth describing in detail. Weather, how the shop was doing, were any _bad eggs_ giving Mrs Figg trouble. The conversation turned to his work while I was debating practicing some math. "Any huge breakthroughs at the correctional institution?" He had chuckled and turned to one of the catch, a long-hair gray tabby he cooed to for a good minute before speaking.

"'They caught that insufferable child, Draco Malfoy.'

"Now, Mrs Figg didn't really seem impressed to me, but what she did must have seemed like a kind of front to, for, him. I don't know how she could care so much what he thought she thought, since it was obvious to me, someone who doesn't really interact with people, that she was at least a little disgusted over him. I wasn't surprised though, when I saw his face, that he could believe a lie about caring. No one would have cared about him before, not if he never smiled.

"Later, when I asked her, she gave his name. _Warden at the Institution_, she said. I knew that meant he _kept an eye on_ magical people, the ones who had been incarcerated indefinitely, or definitely, it's not like the system is particularly selective. All the books on the 'downfall' of wizards and witches say what _that_ means. So-called _abnormal_ people locked away for fear that they will somehow kill others.

"Then, of course, I was curious. If you knew me at all, you'd know that to be the perfect adjective to describe me. I found out about _libraries_, and I spend all my free time at the London Library now, reading anything I find on the subject. I started to read everything, all the examples. In 1813, Catherin Gardner killed fourteen _normal_ children. History books cite that so often, but did you know that's not even half the story? For one, Catherin had only _just_ turned eleven; she should have been entering a proper, formal magical education, according to the sparse research I've read, as well as traditional magical practice. It wasn't _her_ fault that the warehouse she unintentionally ignited was stocked with gunpowder when the spark she created caught fire. It wasn't even her fault that the spark formed to start with. And did you know that over a dozen more people died in that blaze? There were wizards living in that building, but almost none of the books mention that at all. Welcome to human history, and all that.

"Anyway, I was closing up the shop, which basically means draping cloths over the cages of birds, ferrets, mice, and such. The bell hanging over the door chimed, so I looked up to ask the customer to leave, since we _were_ closed. It was a woman, a pale, quite tall woman with pink hair the first time I looked, but brown with magenta streaks the second time I tried to make out the colour in the half-light. She had wide blue eyes and she hid something in her pocket as she looked at me. "I'm here to see the back room," she said, like it meant something. Of course I was confused; I crossed my arms.

"'We're closed. Come back tomorrow.'

"'Is Arabella not here?'

"'No, Mrs Figg is here somewhere, she's just -'

"'I'll take it from here, Miss Puckle. Tonks, how is everything?'

"I watched 'Tonks' and Mrs Figg walk away from me, into the backroom, just as the former had asked. She _actually said_, 'They've got Draco, Arabella, locked up in that hell-hole.'

"'I know. Argus was here today, bragging.'

"'I'm glad you think it's _funny_," the stranger snapped when Mrs Figg chuckled slightly, "How do you even maintain a relationship with that - that _traitor_?'

"'He's not a traitor, Tonks. He just likes disciple. Besides, I'm just doing what I have to for the cause.'

"Tonks, who I was beginning to think was at least a little insane, or at _least_ worth wondering about, snarled and muttered something that must have bothered Mrs Figg, since the next noise I heard was slapping. They stepped into the back room; I didn't follow.

"Mrs Figg reappeared, alone, a few minutes later, to shut the shop. I asked her where the other woman went, and did this have something to do with the back room and Draco Malfoy. She looked at me as though she'd dreaded this moment.

"Then she sat me down for a cup of tea, and she told me _everything_. She explained the injustice of the Institution, because she didn't know I'd already done the research. She went over what Argus did, what the Institution equated to, practically a prison but less humane, why she was _seeing_ someone she obviously considered unethical.

"And she explained who you are, Draco, and why you're important. Not that she really knew why you were apprehended. She figured you killed someone or acted out, not got caught teaching children. At least this will be news when I tell her. And _that_, Draco Malfoy, is how I know who you are. Now tell me about the Rebellion."

* * *

Draco might have remembered his dreams more fondly than he did his reality. As he lay awake that night, mulling over the gaze of the bushy-haired young woman, Hermione 'Puckle', and the half-truths he had forced her to say, he was wondering over why he had felt obliged to run away and claim this rebellion under his own name.

He knew the story Narcissa had told him over and over throughout his childhood. It was about their muggle owners and ther secrets, though he still didn't quite know why she'd told it. Maybe it was meant to instill a sense of hope: _Look, Draco, you might be a wizard who is constantly treated like filth, but there's no way you'd be as much of a failure as Tom Riddle, junior!_

She probably never meant for her stories to inspire rebellion, but of course they had. Junior's story was too pathetic to trigger any other reaction in a sympathetic young mind.

Tom Riddle, Senior, had been quite attractive in his youth, so the story went. Neat dark hair, keen black eyes, and skin so pale he was practically the colour of paper. At the time he caught the attention of Merope Gaunt, betrothed to another muggle, a woman who was never named in the story. He was wealthy, charismatic and clever, and, on top of everything, _normal, _with the arrogance to draw attention to it; in other words, he was _the_ most desirable man in Little Hangleton.

The Riddle's owned the Gaunt family, including Merope, who suited her name frighteningly well. Thin, dead hair and heavy shadows beneath her kind blue eyes, her skin closer to gray than white. Even worse, she was a witch, even if she was practically a perfectly acceptable Squib. She had a history of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of the men in her family: her father and brother, both with the rare gift of being able to communicate with snakes, to speak _parseltongue_. _They_ were the worst kind of wizards. They were the kind who considered themselves supreme. Delusional, all of them.

Merope used potions to work her magic, always had. She could whip up a poison or a charm in almost no time at all. So, when she set her sights on Tom Riddle, she was under no illusions. She knew he would not fall for her, ugly, peak-willed witch that she was. She made a potion to charm him, a brew intended to mimic the experience of absolute, obsessive love. When ordered to make him a cup of tea, she added an extra ingredient, and put him under her spell.

It was a whirlwind romance, one every person who knew either of them opposed. No one wanted to offend Tom, though, and aside from her abusive family, no one even knew her name. Eventually, a heavily pregnant Merope became too confident, and in 1926, she ceased dosing him with the potion she'd manufactured.

The illusion broke; he fell out of love with her the next day.

She died in childbirth, depressed and lonely. She lived just long enough for the Riddles' resident nurse to vow to watch over the babe, named Tom Riddle Junior. Then she wasted away.

The household went on like nothing had happened, except with one child added to the serving stagg. Understandably, he was shunned by the muggles. The magical staff, unpaid as they were and with the threat of being Institutionalised hanging over their heads, cut him off completely. Tom Riddle Junior blamed the muggles; he began to plot. He wanted a revolution.

The year was 1981. A street in London was lined with gore, a river of blood twisting and etching a deeper grove into the gutters. Rain warped the reality the witnesses would remember for decades to come, thinning the rivers. Red dyes the stone a faint shade of pink, a shade to be scrubbed away by enslaved wizards and witches and children.

The river veered off to the side, towards the middle of the unmarked road. This was its' origin, a road marked with the dead and dying. Black cloaks blended into the darkness, nothing but scraps of fabric left to be weighed down by a liquid assault. Those who looked on would recall this night with horror and absolute dread, especially magical people. _Good_, the muggles would tell them as the arrests and executions continued. _These are your kind, people like you. Take a look at what happens when you fight this regime. Watch the Death Eaters burn._

In the middle of the cloaks, one still fluttered feebly, its' owner the only one still conscious. He lifted his hand, a pale, wrinkled thing, and removed the hood and, with it, the silver mask. He used to be handsome, obviously, and remnants of this were still apparent in his features: strong jaw, straight nose, wisps of lush hair. The old man stiffly climbed upright, to his knees amongst his allies. There was a thin scar on his left cheek, almost slicing through his almost-black eyes. His expression is one of both desperation and mania, and his ambition was obvious. His name was Tom Marvolo Riddle. He was the leader of the Death Eaters, a force of hundreds that lay sprawled across London at the time, decimated.

Tom was the last one left, the figurehead of the rebellion. And he was surrounded at that point in time, as he slowly climbed to his feet. There was a huge group of muggles, at least fifty of those guards, all in the black they continued to wear in 2014. Every single one of them had their gun trained on Tom Marvolo Riddle, a man armed with a stick, his wand, the only thing that marked him as something other than _normal._

"Drop your weapon!"

Tom didn't flinch when the issue was ordered. "You'll kill me anyway," he snapped, and raised the wand.

Gunfire sliced through the cold, wet night, the guns flashing like tiny bursts of lightning. The assault was so loud, that later no one would recall hearing his body hit the ground. Over fifty years of planning, three years of open warfare, for nothing.

The last revolutionary was dead.

* * *

The reality of his entire situation became abruptly very obvious to Draco, who supposed that he'd asked for as much when he had leant back against the bars. A sharp tap against his spine was enough for that. He shot to his feet, already back against the opposite wall before it occurred to him that a guard would have simply tasered him without warning. That left one person it could be: the only person to put in an appearance as a visitor to a prisoner at any point in the history of any Institutions' existence.

"Who the hell are you, frizz?"

Draco whipped around, shaking his head quickly. The last thing he needed was Zabini-the-murderer getting involved in the whole affair that he'd constructed with the girls' help. She seemed to sense this already, or at least knew better, as she barely spared the half-Italian wizard a glance. "I have them."

That caught him off guard. He'd already suspected that she wasn't quite normal, but breaking into the Wardens' office was beyond _abnormal_. He told himself he wouldn't have asked, because it would have ruined the ploy, but in all honesty he only stopped because she waved him off.

"He thinks I'm someone else. Are you certain I should pass it on to you now?"

"There are guards watching, still."

"They aren't seeing anything," she said cryptically. He blinked uncomprehendingly back at her before he approached the bars again, heart racing. If she'd gotten it right somehow, if by some fluke it really _was_ what he'd asked for...

He employed the utmost care in stretching his hand towards her as subtly as possible, pressing his pale, spindly fingertips against the bars. She glanced aside, then pressed three thin pieces of wood into his hand.

He let out the breath he hadn't entirely noticed he'd been holding, ignoring his lungs relief as he did so. These were his saviours, the things that would grant him a reprieve from constant stress, at least temporarily, over this particular item. There were still the dreams, of course, which were becoming gradually more convincing, and Zabini's incessant _gossip_, and of course the rest of the plan he'd devised. He placed _far too much_ value in this object, he knew, but it was worth far more than anything else.

Hermione patted her hair gently, as though trying to soften the bushiness of it out of nervousness or secrecy. For the first time while faced with her, he wondered if she was really as trustworthy as she seemed. Then whatever part of his mind was always aware of a dream when it occurred took over for an instant, giving her a rare smile - the expression he wore constantly in their little clearing. He couldn't decide whether surprise was an appropriate reaction when she leaned closer to the bars, pressing her forehead against the cool metal.

"There's a man a few cells away," she murmured, his surprise increasing, "huge ears, dark hair, middle aged. He's muttering to himself right now, and he was before. He keeps saying 'for the best' and 'protect Alice', 'protect Neville'."

"Are you trying to convince me to stay?" His heart sank to somewhere beneath his feet. _Did I always want support, or is this just because she looks like _her_?_

She shook her head. "Are you certain you want to leave here alone?"

_I'm hardly leaving_ alone_,_ he thought. "You'll be there."

Behind him, Zabini snorted, obviously amused by the comment. Draco stifled a groan, then nodded to his 'visitor'. "Four days. You asked for this, remember that."

Her brown eyes flicked back to Draco, away from the immaturity of the Italian, and she nodded quickly before she left. The blonde deliberated slowly before he turned to face his smirking cellmate who, as far as he was concerned, didn't deserve what it would cost to keep him silent.

"That's a wand," the other wizard said, smirking. "Three wands. Where did you get three wands, Malfoy?"

"Don't have to explain myself to the likes of _you_."

"I'll just make an announcement to the guard, then, that your girlfriend armed you, shall I? Broke the law. She'll get locked up here with you. Bet you'd like that."

"She's not my girl - oh, _fine_. What do you want, Zabini? What is it that will make you shut up?"

Zabini's smirk died, for the first time wearing an expression expressing absolute seriousness. His words wouldn't surprise anyone. "_I want out_."

_Well, obviously. We all do_.

_And we'll get it._


	4. Into Darkness, Into Hell

**Challenges: **TeddyRemusPotters' _The Variety Challenge_ on HPFC; DobbyRocksSocks' Harry Potter Chapter Competition; Screaming Faeries' _Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge_ on HPFC; MelodyPond77's _Long Haul Competition _on HPFC.

**Prompts: Q**uote #109: _The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do; _**H**arry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, chapter 5 - Diagon Alley: _write about someone being amazed by something new_. (Bonus prompt: _Really?_); **51\. H**elen: _Write about Polyjuice Potion_.

**Word count: **2,674

* * *

"Hermione, could you please check the supplies of food for the kneazles? I need to know if I need something set aside "

"Sure, Mrs Figg."

Aabella Figg was a rather old woman, though her eyes retained the same glimmer of energy that Hermione supposed had attracted a fair amount of trouble. Her hair was frizzy and grey, flyaway beneath the hairnet she used in an attempt to contain it; it was in her face more often than not. The combination of a leg that had been wrecked in a car crash years ago and her considerable age made it rather difficult for her to shift supplies with the regularity that everything involving the store demanded. At least, that was the excuse the muggles were given for why a woman who could barely support herself on her meagre income would hire a seventeen-year-old stranger from somewhere else entirely.

The pet store was not a particularly popular attraction. It was a cornerstore, kept neat by the obsessive pride of owner, with a dark wood exterior and windows filled with opaque textured glass. The inside was simultaneously light and dark, moody and friendly, soothing and eerie; every animal unusually quiet for what they were, kept calm by complacence.

The dogs were subdued and friendly on their side of the store, a motley collection of Siberian Husky pups that had been sold to Mrs Figg a month earlier, a fluffy Bolognese she'd rescued from an abusive old man, and half a dozen Finnish Lapphund specimens Hermione had procured herself, her first transaction. There were more cats, though, than dogs, purely because they weren't as popular with the muggles as the dogs were - and, of course, the magically gifted individuals were hardly free to purchase anything of their own. A parrot cage sat on the counter, but the bird itself, an African Grey, preferred to perch on the shelves in the centre of the room, or, when it could get to the back, on the banister of the stairs leading up to the flat.

Hermione had never been to the flat, but she had been shown the back room. That was where most things were stored, and since she worked on displays and tending to the animals while her employer tended the register, she had to know how the meticulous system worked. In the back room were two staircases, one going up to the flat, and one headed down to the basement, where Arabella's biggest secret was kept: the Rebellion.

Maybe it was dark and a little damp in the basement, but that didn't change it from being Hermione's favourite area of the property. The same size as the store above, and without any windows, it was rather dark - if one didn't know where the light switch was beforehand, they would almost certainly trip over one of the boxes. It would be an absolute fluke if they made it without almost killing themselves. Once she got past them, though, she was in something that was as close to Heaven as she'd get given her current predicament.

Hermione loved reading. It was a fact of her existence and had been for as long as she'd been capable of making sense of the characters on the pages on the table and later, when she was stronger, in her hands. The pages felt _right_ in her hands, like they were home. It took the edge off of her loneliness, that was for sure.

So, when she found the stacks of books in Arabella's basement, she was understandably pleased. She wasn't surprised, though, when they turned out to be about magic. The first time a muggle had come into the store while Hermione was at the register, the woman had looked around, her hand tight on her highly rather muscular sons' hand as she dragged him through the door. The woman looked like a thin-lipped waking nightmare, with blond hair and an abnormally narrow build. Her voice was shrill and ridiculously piercing to listen to. It certainly didn't help that she looked like a horse and demanded instantly, "Where's the squib?"

Hermione had flinched at her voice, double checking that the dustcover for _Pride and Prejudice_ was secure over her crumbling copy of _Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charms_. Then she'd looked up, torn between indignation at the womans' lack of common courtesy, and curiosity regarding the small blimp behind her. "I'm sorry?"

"Oh, never mind, I suppose you'll do just fine if Mrs Figg isn't available. Perhaps you can help my Dudders? It's his birthday."

"Oh, how wonderful," she had claimed, moving to help them after hiding the book. But all the same, the word played out in her mind. _Squib_.

She knew about wizards and witches. She knew that muggle meant 'non-magical person'. Later, after Mrs Figg returned, Hermione disappeared downstairs to find the definition for the unknown word in one of the many books. She discovered that it referred to those who had magical parents but no magical abilities themselves; the people muggles considered 'success' stories out of their own bigotry.

"Poor Mrs Figg," Hermione mused to herself, closing one of the books she'd 'borrowed' from the pet store basement. She leant back against the weirdly thin wall, wishing she wasn't horrendously nervous about her plans for the next day. Staying awake too long could potentially ruin the plan in the long run, after all, and she couldn't imagine failing anything. This entire scenario was something she had both dreaded and looked forward to all week: she had never managed to not succeed at anything. The first thing she had absolutely _had_ to succeed in was leaving home; it was the first time she'd been aware of other people in the world, people in worse circumstances than her.

She'd never been able to resist the lure a social cause, having a long history of convincing her muggle parents to sponsor things in their world: guide dogs, survivors of genocides, rainforests on the American continent, just to name a few. When she finally, for the first time, noticed, _really_ noticed, that there were oppressed people out there who weren't so much as fighting for themselves, it was like a slap in the face. _Wake up, Hermione_, it ordered, first only in her subconscious mind as she slept, and later interrupting her thoughts constantly. _You always wanted to save the world; here's your chance_.

As she shut off her bedside light that night, the only piece of furniture she'd bothered to buy alongside her sleeping bag, she clicked her tongue impatiently. _Twenty-four hours_, she chanted in her mind. _Twenty-four hours. Then we'll know if all this effort was worth it_. Even with the lights off and the neighbours quiet, she did not sleep until she'd slipped her hand under her pillow, pressing her fingers against the one comfort she'd allowed herself.

_Twenty four hours._

* * *

Draco wished his dreams would stop changing, but they had already started and, thus far, hadn't slowed down at all. The changes weren't huge; they were quite minor, really. The formerly faceless bushy-haired young woman had been standing at the edge of their usual clearing, at the base of the hill. She'd turned around and looked right up at Draco, as if daring her to stop him. "It's too cramped in here," was all she offered by way of explanation, at least at the start.

This served more to confuse Draco than it did anything else. The way he saw it, they were in a clearing in the middle of a forest. It was far from his idea of a paradise, but it _was_ better than the dank cell he faced during the day. Additionally, as he discovered quite quickly, it was considerably more open than the forest that surrounded it, where the shadows were pitch black, hiding monsters he couldn't begin to imagine, and the gaps in the trees so dark and hazy they seemed to take on a violet hue. The greens were emphasised, though, where columns of moonlight drifted through to ignite them in an enchanting spotlight. "Eerie and beautiful," he murmured aloud, just as his companion said the same thing.

She must have paused at some point, because she was suddenly right in front of him, staring through a gap in the trees. He couldn't see anything through it, but it must have been an impressive sight, to give her pause. She moved like she had purpose, always had; even his dreams from childhood, when their time was occupied with silent games and muted laughter, were full of her moving deliberately with precision more common in the older and wiser members of the populace.

"Where are you taking me?"

"Why? Do you want to go back?"

"I - no - don't be ridiculous. If you're fine, I'm fine. That's how it works in these dreams."

"Are you sure these are dreams?"

"Obviously."

"Really?"

He opened his mouth to snap at her - _yes, of course_ \- but hesitated at the last possible moment. He wasn't sure at all, he realised. When he was little, a child, he'd long been confused by the blurred line that seemed to have been drawn between his waking reality and subconscious experience. Hadn't he been slapped for asking his father where the girl had gone? The girl hadn't stayed away, though, unlike all the other dreams that had caused him some kind of trouble, and all Lucius had snapped at him was that he was dreaming and to get his head out of the clouds. But then again, the taste of sugar was still strong on his tongue, a mocking reminder that _this wasn't real_.

"I really wish you'd stop doing that," he stated drily.

Hermione chuckled aloud, amused by him. "The greatest pleasure in life, Draco, is doing what you are told you cannot do. I'd have thought you'd have realised that by now."

"What's to realise? You just showed up, Hermione, out of nowhere."

"And why do you think I'd have chosen to do that?"

"I don't know. The only version of you I know is this one, isn't it? The one that exists inside my head."

"I think you might find we're more alike than you'd normally expect."

"If you're going to start spouting some crap about parallel universes -"

Hermione tilted her head to the side, but when she opened her mouth this time, all that came out was an obscenely infuriating siren.

* * *

"_Shit_, that's goddamn loud," Draco muttered to his cellmate, who, it seemed, he'd never be free of. Zabini had swiped the wands and managed to smuggle them past the pair of guards who had come to collect them, and everyone else, from the cells lining their hall. The two were right behind the large-eared man Hermione had described. He was even still muttering about Alice and Neville, whoever they were.

"It's just a drill," the Italian prisoner shrugged, absently straightening his sleeves. "Is she bringing clothes?"

"I don't know. Either she brings some, or she takes us to - why am I telling you this?"

"You owe me a favour, remember."

"I think I've held up my end of the bargain, Zabini."

"I'm still in chains, Malfoy. We're not even yet." He wasn't being metaphorical. Though Draco had initially been confused as to why such an inhumane facility would evacuate individuals in case of an emergency, especially a fire, he'd since had quite a few answers explained slowly by Zabini, though his tone was constantly condescending. As it turned out, the staff were avoiding extra paperwork.

Draco wasn't sure why he was at all surprised by the selfishness of muggles anymore, but this - _this _\- was extraordinary. Beneficial to him, sure. That didn't make it any less disturbing.

The entirety of the population of cell block B were in chains, which they weren't at all pleased about. There was a kid behind them somewhere, though, maybe thirteen years old, who was thrilled. Clearly, this was his first emergency exit. Granted, it was Draco's as well, but he wasn't particularly excited. Nervousness and paranoia were getting to him. Every possible way this could screw up was flashing through Draco's mind: he could be caught, Zabini could be caught, a wand could be broken, hell, _she_ could be caught.

"Cell B104. Numbers 53431 dash 886, 543831 dash 002. Accounted for. Cell B105. Numbers..."

Draco flinched as the guard checking their presence passed by far too close for comfort - of course, anywhere in a three-kilometre radius was too close for the liking of any sane wizard. Or maybe he was just jumpy because time was almost up and _she wasn't there_.

"Oy. Malfoy."

"Can it, Zabini. I'm not in the mood."

"At least he's relatively nice to look at, I suppose."

_That_ caught Malfoy's attention. He shot a sidelong glance at Zabini. Something was off, though; something not quite right. He was leaning a little away from Draco, slightly to the left. But Zabini had always had perfect post -

Oh.

"What's next?"

"Well, they're about two thirds of the way through role call. Now they'll start taking the front of the line back, three pairs at a time. We're the thirty-seventh row back; just follow the pair in front when they leave. Right...now."

He did as he was told, ignoring the chafing of the heavy metal against his thin wrists. His mind was spinning, how had she pulled this off? It took a considerable amount of effort for him to focus on the job, more than it should have. _Focus, Draco. This is what you meant to do_.

His subconscious belonged to a version of Hermione he hadn't known existed or was even based on the real thing, but that didn't mean his conscious mind was entirely his own. Lucius' voice in his mind was there: _You're taking orders from this nobody, my son. You better have a plan that makes this all worthwhile._

_No, father, not right this second._

She wrenched him to the left, into a small alcove, not that he was sure why it was there. It didn't seem to fit the design of the rest of the huge facility at all, which was all boxes fitted together in perfect rows. "It aligns with the water and power meters in the higher levels, and the muggle offices aren't quite in a position that makes sense. Now stop hesitating, Malfoy, and get out your wand. I want you to tap me on the head, and say the word _evanescere, _imagine me disappearing completely."

"_Evanescere_? Is that an incantation? How do you -"

"Questions. Say it."

"It could be dangerous!" _Understatement_. The magical community being what it was, verbal spells were _not_ safe. Almost no spells were remembered from before the war between muggles and magical people. How could they be? Wizards oppressed, the records burned or locked away

"It's magic, of course it's dangerous. That's why I'm asking you to cast it on me first. That way you won't accuse me of trying to kill you, or whatever your mind could twist my intentions into. Just cast it. Tap me on the head. _Before_ I start turning back into myself."

More than a little loss, and only just realising that the chains were still a problem, he finally did as she had ordered. To his complete and utter surprise, the word - spell - made her completely disappear before his eyes. He barely noticed her movements, just the feel of wood against his skull, and then the chink of metal falling away, being snatched up by her before the cuffs could hit the ground. "Did -"

"_Silencio_," she hissed, forcing him to shut up. It wasn't until a minute later that she had found and grabbed his hand that she began to pull him away: away from the cells, and out into the world where neither of them would really be free.

But running away, however far, was a victory. At least for the day.


	5. Fear Itself

**Challenges: **Screaming Faeries' _Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge _on HPFC; DobbyRocksSocks' _Harry Potter Chapter Competition_ on HPFC; butterflygirly99's _Prompts Mania Challenge_ on HPFC; MelodyPond77's _Long Haul Competition _on HPFC.

**Prompts: 52. P**andora: _write about childish curiosity._

**H**arry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, chapter 9 - A Place to Hide: _write about running, write about being found. _(Bonus prompt: _ridicule_).

**Hard: S**ongs 19: _Run Boy Run_ _by Woodkid_ **/** **C**olors 2: _scarlet_, 20: _amber_ **/** **D**ialogue 19: _"Why can't you just trust me?"_ **/ R**andom 2: _tired_, 12: _jagged_.

**Word count: **3,425

* * *

"How the _Hell_ did you do that, any of that? Hermione, what was all that?"

"Can this maybe wait until we're more than six feet from the door and you're not wearing a bright amber – orange – whatever – jumpsuit?"

"No."

This caused her to pause, her bushy hair - she'd returned to looking like herself, for what it was worth - sticking to her sweaty forehead. He wasn't sure when she'd gone through enough effort to cause that particular reaction, they'd barely been running for five minutes and yet she was gasping like an asthmatic. "There's an apartment building about a block from here," she informed him in a tone that was both brisk and breathless. "Red brick. Maybe you can wait until we get there?"

"_No_, Granger. I want answers."

"Why can't you just trust me?"

"How can I be sure you're actually trustworthy?"

She met his gaze with the patience of a woman far more experienced than she actually was, a spark in her chocolate eye that dared him to defy her. "Why are you so sure that I'm not?"

* * *

"Zabini?"

"Malfoy. Nice of you to show up."

The Italian frustration was sitting on the kitchen counter, a book open in his lap and his wand clasped loosely in his fingers. A trail of sparks flowed from its' tip like a leaky faucet: it wasn't Blaise's wand, not like how Draco's was really _his_. They didn't quite match. After all, wands were hard to come by unless you had the exact right connections. Draco's only existed because of his contact with certain convenient sympathisers since he'd run away from the muggles who had owned his family for generations.

"He was arrested for murder," Hermione said to break the silence that fell over them. "Blaise was, I mean. He killed a muggle who raped his mother."

"You don't have to tell _him_."

"Yes, I do, actually. I can't have you two hanging around trying to skin each other alive. You're much more use to everyone if you're actually trying to be somewhat civil to one another, and besides, if you two start fighting with each other, then our chances of getting out of any of this alive are cut drastically. Can you see the logic in that? Jabbing wands at each others' throats is just going to make a scene and bother the muggles."

"Oh, lovely. Are you going to tell him all _my_ secrets now?"

Hermione raised an eyebrow at the blond wizard, gesturing for him to take a seat on the floor or counter as she leaned against the one wall across from Blaise. "I don't know all your secrets, Draco. It's not really my priority right now."

Her apartment was tiny and narrow; the area where she stood was a gap between the counter and front door intended to be an alcove for a refrigerator - something she didn't own. Draco could see a scarlet sleeping bag on the floor in a corner of the room. Though there were several powerpoints around the room, only one was in use, and that was a lamp beside her sleeping area. He couldn't see anywhere him _or_ Zabini would rest, except perhaps on the floor. Then again, that would probably be softer than the facilities' cots. At least her apartment had some version of carpeting, even if it looked like it had been half consumed by moths. One book lay beside the sleeping bag, one was in Zabini's hands, and aside from the canvas bag Hermione had set on the counter, the room was otherwise bare. She seemed to literally have less than Draco had when he fled with the clothes on his back, a wad of stolen currency and a few items of jewellery that were family heirlooms his mother sometimes wore: lockets, three rings too small to fit on her fingers, and a pair of pearl earrings.

Though he didn't know whether or not Narcissa had ever reported the items stolen, he thought he knew enough to consider himself somehow superior to this stranger who had waltzed out of his dreams and into his life with some kind of hero complex. Hermione seemed to be intent on saving him. And, for the moment, this was enough to grant her some of his rare exhibitions of patience.

"_Hermione_," he hissed, his tone a rather obvious warning. "You swore you'd tell."

"I actually didn't make any such oath, but I will answer some questions, I suppose. You want to know how I learned that spell? I didn't. I made it up based on some books I found."

"Books on _what_? Wishes and unicorns?"

"Actually, no, it was a tome on wandlore and happened to contain a brief guide to simplistic spell casting. I could quite easily explain to you how it works, but now is hardly the time. Essentially, you visualise your intent, aim your wand and cast. The incantation I gave you is a Latin word that means _vanish_. It seemed appropriate."

"Why do you even know Latin?"

"Ah, my parents were considerably obliging, given the circumstances they were under. They'd have let me learn how to run a meth lab if I asked, just so long as I didn't actually _do _anything to get noticed. When I asked to learn Latin, they were thrilled. They thought I was behaving normally, or accepting my lot in life, something to that effect, at least."

"Okay. You learned spell casting - that I get. The wand - did you take it from the stash?"

"There were a surprising amount of wands in Filch's office, yes. Initially I wondered if perhaps more people were in the prison than I expected, but then I realised no, of course not. It was just that they never got around to disposing of the weapons of those who died before our time." She let that hang in the air, cutting a painful silence into the reality they each stood for. Zabini cut the quiet short this time, apparently unable to bear the quiet. This didn't particularly surprise Draco, who had decided when they first met that the other wizard spoke far too much and thought far too little.

"How did you know to get me out? Did Malfoy get a message to you after that little visit you paid? How'd that work, by the way, did you bribe someone?"

"You think the muggles can be bribed? No. I have connections, that's all." She was picturing the soul-scarring image of Mrs Figg and Filch kissing in the pet store, and shuddered accordingly, though the two wizards looked at her as though she was somehow insane. "I wanted to get you out. I think everyone in those cells deserves to be freed. And besides, based on my idea to get Malfoy out, since he's newer and must therefore be observed more keenly by the guards, I needed to do some reading and also some hair from his cellmate. Originally I was planning on taking some from a guard, but I wasn't looking forward to my chances without ending up being noticed more."

"Hermione. You were the first _ever_ visitor to a victim in those cells. You were noticed, like it or not."

"You're a cynic, and no, I wasn't. There's no paper record of me going in. There never could have been; visitors have been banned in those facilities since the mid-1870s. Before then, they were allowed, just uncommon - if a magical person entered, they were arrested, so they got called victims instead. Muggles just didn't desire the publicity."

"'Desire the publicity'? Do you hear yourself right now?"

"Of course I hear myself. They were afraid of public ridicule -"

"Ridicule? _Ridicule?_ People were tortured in those places for years! Do you not understand that?"

"The government forced society into a state such that any deviations from the prescribed socially and legally accepted normative behaviours would result in harsh social, criminal, financial, reformative and even oppressive punishments. Of course the muggles are going to fear change after being faced with barbaric encouragements for centuries. These things don't change overnight, Draco, they never will. And if they do, then it's not a reform worth acknowledging."

"Hair?" Both eyes went to Blaise, who hadn't moved from his perch on the bench. The wizard was not phased by the brunt of the glares, furious with him for interrupting what could have been a devastating argument. "Puckle, Hermione, whatever. You said something about needing hair. _Why_?"

"Oh, that was for the Polyjuice Potion."

"The what now?"

"Polyjuice Potion. It's a recipe that seems to date back to the seventeenth century, and allowed people, usually wizards or witches, to assume the form of whomevers' hair happened to be added to the potion. I found it in something called _Moste Potente Potions_, which I found in - um."

"_Um_? How wonderfully specific."

"Oh, hush up, I just don't want to get them in trouble if one of you says something to the wrong person."

Draco's eyebrows shot up, but he wasn't angered. He simply figured that she must have been referring to Zabini, and for that, he didn't blame her at all. As far as he was concerned, the other wizard deserved to be judged purely on appearance and attitude. "Yeah, right. Like that's ever going to happen. They'll never believe a thing we tell them, Hermione."

"They might," she snapped. "I can't take that risk. I'm not willing to put the person who helped me in danger based on an assumption. You can't ask me to, Draco, regardless of your status in your group."

"Revolution. It's a revolution."

"Whatever you want to call it, Zabini."

"I'm calling it what it is, whether you two like it or not. By the way, that reminds me. Why does this signature have a G in it?"

"What're you talking about? Let me see that."

Blaise held out the book he'd been reading, allowing Hermione to examine the page he had found to be autographed. Draco looked on, torn between his usual apathy and mild curiosity. This person, this bushy-haired, stubborn young woman who had gracelessly slipped into his life and stolen him from high-security Hell, she was an oddity. She seemed well-read, she had more knowledge of wizarding lore than he did, even though _he_ was the culmination of a long line of witches and wizards, while she, quite frankly, did not. She couldn't; she'd specifically said that she didn't run from the same things he had.

So what did that leave for her to run from?

He guessed she could be one of those rare magical people with muggle parents – only that didn't seem particularly likely; she was far too well-read. She was obviously seventeen years old, and she didn't look like she'd spent a day in a cell, with no indication of the frailty or malnourishment he'd seen in other prisoners – muggles couldn't have known about her, then.

She could be an escapee, getting away from a guards' attempt to take her into custody when they inevitably underestimated her, just as he had when he'd asked her to find out where the wands were stored, to get him out, and not to get caught. Then again, hiding with a well-known squib wouldn't be a very intelligent way to go about avoiding the guard, particularly not when the squib happened to be the woman dating the warden of the nearest facility.

She couldn't even be a refugee; London was nothing more than a step in the journey. Londons' aging streets weren't the best place for an illegally free witch to linger, let alone the doorstep of a prison intended to trap her kind.

Draco's head ached from the effort that accompanied each of the excuses, none of which sounded like explanations for Hermione 'Puckle' and her muggle ID. This no-nonsense witch – she _had_ used magic, after all, to make herself look like Blaise Zabini, and to smuggle Zabini out without Draco noticing, and probably for more than that, too – didn't _look_ like her name should be 'Puckle'. It sounded too fake, like it was trying to mock him or her or _someone_, _anyone_, catching in his mind on the unreality of the entire situation.

He knew he _wanted_ to trust her, or at least some part of him knew that doing so would be more practical than holding her at a distance, just like each of the other acquaintances he'd captured _just_ long enough to use. He wanted to use her, too, as she'd be invaluable in what he was trying to do. But first, he wanted to know _who_ she was.

Then he'd move on to whatever she was hiding.

* * *

Draco couldn't get to sleep.

It wasn't that he wasn't tired. It was just that the carpeted floor, no matter how threadbare it turned out to be, was too luxurious for a body used to hard prison mattresses, cold stone and jagged floorboards. His subconscious was working him up in preparation for the challenges of the next day, so of course _that_ kept him alert, too. He knew they would be leaving in a hurry, even though his host had never said a word: he'd seen her pack away her meagre collection of possessions. Maybe she'd been silent, but he recognised the signs. He remembered the tics and gestures from his own preparations for flight.

His mind was warping reality, twisting his perception of the shadows. All the light of London seemed to filter through Hermione's too-thin curtains; part of him wanted to block up the windows with planks and sheets of card. That would probably be quite suspicious, though, even though such décor was relatively common in the next suburb to the south, at least if he was remembering correctly.

Paper rustled in a corner, and he tightened his hand immediately around his wand, brought to the makeshift bed as his own version of a childs' safety blanket. His mind conjured monsters, dragons and werewolves sent to tear his, their, throats out.

He didn't even know enough about magic to get rid of one lowly muggle, yet he'd tried to teach teenagers what little he knew, and that was what had got him locked up in the first place, wasn't it? And now it had led to this mess. How would be possibly survive an attack from monsters in the dark? Perhaps Hermione would have a chance, but then again, she'd demonstrated no knowledge of offensive magic, just things he associated with deception. She had the skillset of a muggle spy with a few useful gadgets, not the talent of the wizards who'd slayed muggles throughout the wars. She couldn't fend off a beast.

Slowly, carefully, he eased his hand out from beneath the fabric he'd been given to ward off the chill she'd said would come with the dawn. _Slowly_, he ordered himself when another noise crept from his left.

A snort, a sound recognised by some section of his mind that had been drowned out by adrenaline and desperation to fight, trying to evolve a rational conclusion instead of _monster_. In the darkness, a woman whimpered, something that must surely have come from his host. It was a noise of abject terror, he decided, slowly sitting up. The blanket fell from his form, reducing his defence to nothing more than a too-large shirt that frayed at the ends of the sleeves.

A dark, hulking mass stood directly to his left, a thing that snorted and groaned and seemed largely inhuman. It looked like a wildebeest, but twisted. It stood on its' rear hooves and its' overall body was contorted, as if it attempted to pass as a deformed person. Its' chest too large, its' snout shortened grotesquely, it was the stuff of nightmares.

It reached for its' prey, the witch cowering in the corner. Her wand was nowhere in sight, but it could be tangled in the sheets, stuffed away in her bag, closed in a kitchen drawer. He hadn't seen what she'd done with it, though he knew she'd fallen asleep with a book, not a wand, in hand. She was about information, after all, not offense.

He grunted himself, the floorboards creaking beneath him as he shifted his weight, searching his mind for any spell at all. There had to be something he could use, didn't there? Hermione's books described creatures and places he'd never even heard of, not unlike the thing before him. It was African, an herbivore, but this _thing_ obviously wasn't. He expected it to slaughter them all before he could get anywhere in the means of defending Hermione.

But she had to live. "Draco," he heard, a voice that was certainly hers. He knew it better than he knew his own, the voice of a woman he'd never dreamed would speak until a few weeks ago. Rational, careful, practical, she had to have something useful, anything useful, anything at all.

"Oi, ugly!"

The thing turned to him; he got his wish. Its' eyes were as black as coal, no light within, nothing but death and darkness in its' soul. Draco drew himself to his full height, as close as he could get without standing, drawing his wand and aiming it right at the thing, more purposely than before. "Draco, c'mon."

The thing stared at him, a fine fog cast from its' huge nostrils each time it breathed. Maybe it wasn't a wildebeest, he realised now, seeing that its' feet were not hooves, and what he'd thought of as forelegs were shaped more like overly muscular arms. The thing was still twisted, but in its' fingertips it was undeniably human, blood running over its' taut physique.

"Draco, we haven't got time for this!"

He opened his mouth, finally, but he didn't hear his own words past the blood rushing to his head. The monster, though, became something else far too quickly.

Nothing but green.

"Draco, for the love of God, get _up_! You can't afford to be asleep now?"

A hand over his mouth. Heavy breathing, a pain in his shoulder. Draco tensed, eyes wide open, looking around quickly for the signs of a hulking mass. All he could see were shadows and, in the shaft of moonlight drifting through the tiny window, dark eyes fixed him with a judgemental stare. But this was not hatred, nor rage; this was distaste, this was familiar.

Closer, a haze of curls filtered the rest of his former cellmate from his vision. He must have been dreaming of the wildebeest _thing_, he realised, wishing he'd noticed it. Never before had he missed the taste of sugar on his lips, not while asleep – but then again, his dream-self wasn't usually on the brink of complete and total annihilation.

Behind the hand, he opened his mouth to speak. His words would be muffled, he knew that, but he was mourning the loss of that spell. Green light. And the beast had stopped grunting, hadn't it? Or had he just been unable to hear it?

That was when he noticed that the witches' eyes were wide, an expression he hadn't seen before. Her lips were parted slightly, as if she were hesitating or waiting to say something. She glanced back at Zabini, nodded once, then looked back at Draco. In the poor light, she looked almost translucent, with milky skin and wide, dark eyes that glistened in the moonlight. She could have been a ghost, but then again, she couldn't. He had a feeling that Hermione Puckle would never be able to let the world pass by, unaffected by her presence. She was like him in that respect.

"Draco. Draco, focus. Are you awake enough? Can you hear me?"

He nodded once, sharply, urgently. Whatever this was about, it had to be rather huge. Why else would she have woken him when he'd been so sure he wasn't actually dreaming?

"There are guards in the building."

Silence filled the room for several beats, the sensation of his heartbeat the only sign of time passing as his own eyes widened, his lips unable to form a coherent response that wouldn't be muffled to senselessness by her small, pale hand. The expression in her eyes, he knew what it was. He associated it with orphaned children, prisoners and horror stories: Hermione so-called 'Puckle', he realised, was afraid, and she was looking at him like whatever they would do next was entirely up to him.

_Well, shit_.

He wondered if the wildebeest was really the most monstrous thing he'd faced so far that night.


	6. Good Intentions

**Challenges: **Screaming Faeries' _Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge_ on HPFC.  
DobbyRocksSocks _Harry Potter Chapter Competition_ on HPFC.  
MelodyPond77's _Long Haul Competition IV_ on HPFC.

**Prompt: ****33\. S**elene: _write about something happening during the night.  
_**O**rder of the Phoenix, chapter 34 - The Department of Mysteries: _write about hiding._

**Word count: **2,408

**A/N: **Ekrizdis is the wizard who JK Rowling credits with the creation of Dementors. Emeric 'the Evil' massacred muggles in the early Middle Ages with the Elder Wand; he's mentioned in _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ as a wizard who is mixed up with Uric the Oddball. Herpo 'the Foul' is an Ancient Greek Dark Wizard credited with the first ever hatching of a Basilisk, also being the first ever creator of a Horcrux and one of the earliest Parselmouths; he has been mentioned in _Fantastic beasts and Where to Find Them_ and in the first three video games on a Chocolate Frog card.

* * *

When Draco was little, he'd been afraid of the dark.

By the time the fear faded to a less intense point, one that didn't have the power to control his life, he knew it wasn't the lack of light that scared him, _per se_. No, what he'd really been afraid of were the things that the dark could hide. Muggle horror stories described monstrous _things_ that would suck all the blood out of a person, draining them of life, and things powerful enough to slaughter ones' entire family and then face the hero with a smile that was sweeter than honey.

Magical horror stories were more grotesque, having not been filtered as time passed. There was no Disney to twist the eerie story of Ekrizdis and his abusive insanity into a ridiculous fairy story of fluffy happiness, no fairy godmother to sweep the caped horrors as far under the rug as they were able to go. Nothing in the way or miraculous ways to twist the legend of Grindlewald into some sappy romance, or to make Emerics' massacres look tame, or to make the Ancient Greek Herpos' creation of freakish beasts like the basilisk be something that could be considered 'good'. Wizards didnot have Disney to twist the darkness into the afterthought of some romantic happily-ever-after. They had word of mouth, though, and time made things worse.

Time might have made him understand his fear, made it bearable. But time always gave emphasis to horror stories. That was the way the human psyche worked.

So of course the idea of guardsinvading the peaceful façade of the apartment building horrified him. It appealed to a part of him that had been repressed for years, drew out memories of nightmares haunting every corner. And the guards were just the vampires, there to draw out the life of their prey. To draw the life out of witches and wizards, of him.

_Of Hermione_.

He didn't need to listen closely to hear the guards; no wonder Hermione – and even Zabini – had seemed so panicked when they had managed to shake him awake. They had left the engines running on their oversized four wheel drives in the street, ominous patches of darkness in the gloomy circles cast by lonely streetlights; he could see them through the thin gray curtains. The cars were vehicles worthy of Death itself. They might as well have been, because there was no way was he going back to that cell.

Some disgruntled neighbour, a woman, judging by the voice, opened the door with a disgruntled mumble. Draco paid no mind to Hermione as she opened the door a crack, peering down the hall with her eyes wide. Male voices followed the womans' down, less distinct, "Two in the freaking morning. Honestly, those freaks have _no_ respect."

"Shut up, moron, they don't need to _know_ how the Warden fucked up."

She closed the door gently, wincing slightly. "We can't go that way. They're blocking the entire hallway, and this building doesn't have a fire escape. That's the only reason I could afford the rent, it's technically an illegal construction with modern building code standards and all."

"You babble when you're nervous. It's annoying."

"Shut up."

"No, you do. It's bizarre. You weren't like this when you pretty much abducted me."

"Oh, you mean when you shrieked like a child facing a spider?"

"No need to be snide. It's just an observation; besides, I didn't ask _you_ to rescue me."

"No, Blaise, you asked Draco to do _that_. I just happened to be how he was going to get out."

"Fat lot of good that's done anyone so far."

"If I had my wand, Blaise Zabini, I'd - how did you know where that was?"

Draco snorted, shaking his head. "You already packed to leave. We're just going slightly earlier than expected; there's really no point in panicking."

"I'm not -"

"You are absolutely panicking. Both of you."

"Why are _you_ so calm?"

"Do everyone a favour and shut up, Zabini. You both need to get your acts together; neither of you are any use to me like this."

"Who died and made you boss," but Blaise jumped down from the counter he was sitting on, gripping his wand experimentally. He moved to the window, just as he'd been told, to attempt to pry it open. He didn't care, after all, as long as he lived. It wasn't the first time Draco had met someone whose only ambition in life was self-preservation. It wouldn't be the last, either, though the adrenaline in his veins drove all thoughts of any future he might ostensibly be able to predict far from his mind.

Hermione was staring at Draco, who didn't dare meet her eyes. He didn't want the distraction, the toxicity of his nightmare corrupting his mind. Wildebeest, he'd thought in the dream, but that wasn't right. It was something else, something mythical that tore apart his subconscious, but now that he tried to name it, he couldn't come up with it. A distracting force, it took considerable effort for him to dismiss his preoccupation - even though it was just temporarily. He knew if he looked at her chocolate gaze, he'd only see fear within.

_God, I've had enough of fear._

"Alright. We're going to have to go out the window; there's a ledge out there that should be able to bear our weight. Even combined. It's not like any of us are that heavy."

He didn't notice Hermione turn completely white as she nodded her assent. He didn't know she was terrified of heights. That was alright, though. She didn't know before then that she was more afraid of dying.

No one ever understands their fears until after they're forced to face them.

* * *

Later, the trio would claim that they didn't really remember how they'd escaped. The guards were famously fervent in their pursuit of the so-called magical 'freaks; it was a miracle that any of them were still in one piece.

They weren't, though, were they? The sound of a gunshot continued to echo in Hermione's head as she pressed her aching skull back against a cold brick wall, wishing she could fade into the blackness and never be seen again. She allowed this thinking to continue for one minute, then for two, before she took a deep breath and turned to face Draco, pointing silently across the street. A pet shop corner store, the place looked old, unassuming, and frayed around the edges. It wasn't lit up by the moon far above, cast into shadow by the much taller buildings around it. In other words, the pet store Hermione had found to hire her looked like it was a hiding place.

Of course it was a frontier for the underground railroad that transported guiltless individuals around and out of England. Hatred of magic was stronger than anywhere else in the world, according to a study completed by some American or other who'd been arrested the first and only time he made the claim in the Piccadilly Circus. The scholar 'R. Lupin' had probably been killed; he certainly hadn't been heard from again. Hermione had read his research in one sitting when she'd managed to enter one of the libraries at King's College for the first time.

_British non-magical people seem to be the most adamantly against magical abilities_, the article read, _led in their fanaticism by the vehemence of the House of Windsor. They parade their 'success stories', whom the magical folk have long dubbed 'squibs', before the masses; simultaneously, potentially powerful men and women waste away in 'containment facilities' that fail to fool any observers. The entire population of the United Kingdom can recite horror stories of the 'plague of wizards' and their 'reasonable' incarceration far beneath their cities, in buildings so obviously worse than the prisoners non-magical people, 'muggles', are usually sentenced to. It is with considerable anger that I am forced to recant a statement I made in Peru, where I was introduced to the leader of the campaign for magical right: the modern world is _not_ superior to the horrors of the past. I had thought it separate, but I am proven wrong. The barbaric oppression of magical people throughout Britain attests to this._

_Lupin would have admired Mrs. Figg_, Hermione thought, _her and all her value of life. They would have gotten along well. _But Lupin had never learned of the railway as it would endanger the entire regime - the man famously spouted his beliefs endlessly, regardless of the potential consequences of his arrogant openness. What Hermione had just done, however, was far worse than any of that.

Her wand was still warm in her hand, which had stopped shaking for the first time since they had been forced to flee. In the basement of the shop, as far from the books as she could get, she had taken a rather primitive flame spell to the remains of the orange obscenities the two boys, aged by their experience, had finally been able to ditch. They had to burn, she reasoned. She couldn't risk Mrs. Figg being connected to the escape.

She could feel his silver eyes burning into the back of her head, his and Blaise's black orbs. She didn't want to face their reality, though, not directly. They could hold fear, as hers would, had she witnessed the act. They could hold dread. Hatred. Scorn. Or, worse, he could accept her crime. That would be the worst thing, she decided with a sigh, extinguishing her blue flame. "You got shot."

"_That's_ over-simplifying matters, don't you think?"

One shoulder raised in a shrug that didn't commit to anything, she shook her head. "We can't afford to be slowed down, Draco, and that's where it all begins. We're dependent on you. You think I don't know that?"

"I don't," Blaise interrupted, but he went ignored. It wasn't the first time since he'd noticed the blood that this had happened; apparently, all he was good for was the healing spells he happened to have a rather simplistic understanding of. He could remove the bullets. That was the beginning and end of Blaise Zabini's current worth to the other two.

"Your hand stopped shaking, Hermione, you think I didn't notice? Just as soon as you turned to that muggle. Maybe I was in pain, but I know I didn't imagine it: you didn't calm down properly until you cast that spell. I don't even know what you did, except that it saved me, and now you're refusing to talk."

She resented his matter-of-fact tone, thought it rather crass, really. He'd probably grown up with stories of horrible, evil people, people who did the sort of thing she'd done. Though she knew she'd gotten it exactly right and no one would ever be able to tear apart her work, and part of her was proud of herself for that, she was equally disgusted with the concept. "He didn't deserve what I did."

"He didn't _die_, woman. Honestly. He just turned around and left; I just want to know how you did that. What kind of magic is that?"

She scoffed weakly, lowering her wand carefully as she examined her steady hand. "_Obliviate_."

"Is that Latin?"

"No. Yes. I don't know."

"That's a specific answer."

"It erases memories, alright? It's old magic. From back before everything. There's no way to undo it, either, the Ministry of Magic was disbanded by King George the Second before it was fifty years old. There were probably departments meant to work out counter-curses, ways to dismiss these dark spells, but obviously they ran out of time. That's not long enough to research."

"Dark magic? Hermione, you saved our lives. That's not _dark_, that's admirable."

"I could have erased his entire life. I don't know what I took, Draco!"

"Doesn't matter. He attacked us, and you did what you had to. You might be more useful than I thought."

"Draco Malfoy, you apologise for that insinuation right this second, or I swear I'll find a way to give Miss Puckle your share of the chocolate."

The three glanced over at the squib, where she stood with a rucksack for each of them beside a door that they could swear hadn't been there before. The lady was aged, her experiences having etched the passage of time into her face, making it seem as though each year had carved another wrinkle into her face. Her smile was the kindest thing any of their tired eyes had seen for hours, though, and she could have probably staked one of them before any of them believed her to be capable of cruelty. Her sharp eyes told of her intelligence, but age slowed her movement. Maybe Arabella Figg could have been active in the revolution once, but now it was all she could do to mind the tunnel.

"Time to go, dears." Ever the kindly ally, she stepped away from the entrance, passing the first bag to Hermione with a smile and an approving nod. If the three of them could keep themselves alive long enough to make it to the end of the passage, they'd be home free - as free as any of them could be in the world they'd ended up in. Arabella had high hopes for Hermione; she ought to be a very capable young witch, once she came to grips with her identity.

Blaise Zabini went second, taking his own bag without a word, gifting the old woman with only a tight smile. This was someone they had to keep an eye on, most likely. He could be a powerful force on their side - but only if they managed to find his agenda and work it into their plan. And that wasn't a guaranteed event, either, not with their would-be leaders' stubborn nature.

Draco went last, meeting Arabella's gaze steadily. He shouldered his load without complaint, as he always had, but his pale fingers covered his bullet wound the second it was possible. "You be good to Hermione, Draco. That girl needs all the friends she can get. God knows you do, too."

Draco offered no apologies to Hermione when he followed her into the passage, but then again, she didn't ask for one. She was too preoccupied by the idea that doing evil in the name of good might be excusable.

She didn't want to justify the muggles' fears.


	7. Lost in Fire

**Word count: **2,111

**A/N: **A Murtlap is a small rat-like creature described in _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_. It has growths on its' back similar to those of a sea anenome, which apparently can be used to make one more resilient to spells. For the sake of this history, the thing was named but never studied extensively, so those properties are unknown - also kind of useless, given the state of society.

* * *

Arabella couldn't recall her store ever being this quiet before, though she supposed it must have been at some point. It had been derelict and void of life when she'd first procured it, after all; not even rats deigned to infest it. There had been no sign of invading pigeons in the rafters upstairs, only cobwebs. And even those had been abandoned, the spiders apparently having decided to vacate the locale.

Now it was more _lively_, certainly. In their separate displays, a husky pup and a Persian kitten tormented one another from opposite sides of the glass. The parrot was feasting contentedly, pleased with her meal of corn and sunflower seeds. One of the kneazles was snoozing quietly, the dull hum of its' purring audible even from the counter across the room.

Staring at the stock order sheet before her, Arabella tried to come up with some idea of what she should write, but her fingers were too tight around her bright blue pen. She could feel the grooves of the raised brand name denting her skin, wrinkled as a prune. She wished she could harness the vitality of youth, bottle it and sell it to the masses. Maybe then the young and powerful would be wise.

She sighed, the sound cutting through the silence as she shook her head. _Wise youth._ She knew who that was, who she was hoping for the world to evolve to be. _Hermione Puckle_. The girl was seventeen, burdened and an incredibly quick study. She'd spun a perfectly reasonable story about fighting with her parents and taking off at a sprint in whatever direction would get her as far away as was humanly possible.

Arabella Figg, though, knew better than to trust the girl.

She'd given Hermione more than enough time to give into the temptation of aging tomes that shouldn't have existed. If she gave in, then she could be an activist. If the girl could be an activist, all the better. They needed more open allies than they had - far more.

She hadn't spotted the signs of magic until after she'd introduced Hermione to the operation that really kept her employed. They were there, though, blindingly plain in retrospect: tasks completed a little too quickly even for an efficient person, words in a dead academic language uttered under her breath. The pages of the book on local wildlife described things that weren't supposed to exist: dragons and werewolves instead of pigeons and stray cats. It should've been obvious to her from the start: after all, the kneazles took instantly Hermione, and she to them, in a way only a magically gifted person could. Even the grouchy old orange hybrid, the one who tended to attack absolutely everyone on sight, liked having her around.

So, when Hermione said that she wanted to help rescue Draco Malfoy, Arabella had been torn. On the one hand, the girl reminded her of her long-gone little sister, Alina, who was somewhere in Sweden last she'd heard, subsisting on her arrogant confidence.

On the other hand, though, they really _did_ need all the help they could get. No one else locally could do it without risking their life and cover, and it had been decided that the underground network needed the young wizard. He inspired the other members of his generation to do what had to be done: consider, for example, what Hermione was willing to risk, and she had never so much as glanced him at that point. And he _was_ a criminal, too, though the guards who had arrested him didn't know the half of it. He'd been arrested for teaching magic, but he'd done so much more than that, and cost them a considerable amount of effort - not to mention risk.

Arabella's mind was made up for her before she could deliberate much more. One of the travelling elders, an older member to their cause, had sent a message that brokered no argument. Three scribbled symbols on a piece of paper that appeared out of nowhere on top of her warped wooden jewellery box. The meaning was clear.

_I'm caught. Help Draco. Fast._

That had been weeks ago, and there had been no second contact. He was hiding, caught, or worse, dead. Arabella prayed that Hermione could provide the temperance Draco Malfoy needed, lest they be doomed to repeat the failures of the past.

Arabella should have been worrying about herself.

* * *

"Please! Please, have mercy."

"Tell us what you know about your son, Narcissa."

"Nothing! I don't know anything."

"I want to help you, Mrs Malfoy, I really do. I can't be any help at all, though, if you _insist_ on the _lying_."

"Ow!"

"Honestly, Mrs M, this isn't that bad. It's just a little poker."

"You're letting it heat in the fire!"

"Oh, so I am. Ah, well, can't be helped. Here, let me - there we go."

"ARGH!"

"Very good, Mrs Malfoy, I see you're coming along quite nicely. Like any worthwhile meal."

"Wh - what? I don't under - understand. You can't - can't _eat_ me. That would breach -"

"Breach what, dear woman?"

"Some - some convention. The one from that African town - the one with the -"

"Witch cult?"

"That's not fair."

"No, it isn't. It's barbaric to feast upon the flesh of any human, particularly children. Yet that's what they do, isn't it? _Your kind_. And yet you're all so damn proud of your sinful power, aren't you?"

"This is a religious thing? You're a fanatic? But -"

"Not a fanatic, no. But enough about me, Mrs Malfoy. I'm afraid you aren't giving me the information I want. You're not proving very useful."

"I don't know _anything_, alright? Why do you insist on not understanding that? _Ow_!"

"Mrs Malfoy, I can assure you that I am doing _everything_ _possible_ to make this easier."

"Liar. Lying liar who lies."

"Cute. Again."

* * *

Her screams sliced through the air, even though a spark of light came into existence immediately. Hands scrabbled against something that rattled on the fringes of darkness, and Hermione lurched backwards, her chest heaving. "There's something there!"

"Yeah, Hermione, there probably is. And it's probably got a tail, too. Rats usually do."

"Very funny, but it's _not_ a filthy _rat_, Malfoy. I worked in a pet store, I'm not afraid of some tiny disgusting creature."

"Really? And I'm supposed to believe that?"

"Believe what you want, Draco, I couldn't care less. Just help me up, git."

"Fine, fine," Draco agreed distractedly, keeping his wand raised and using the pool of light it cast to trace shapes in the eerie gloom. He repeated the spell to Zabini, knowing he'd repeat the casting regardless of any ill will between them. He could see _things_ moving in the shadows, and despite his teasing, prayed that they weren't rats, were anything _but_ rats. Vile little beasts, skittering through shadows and streaking across perfectly decent light pools that his tiny group continuously failed to hold steady.

And why was that? Maybe they were a little tired, but -

"What the hell is _that_?"

"Christ, Zabini, want to startle me some more?"

"Oh, like her screaming didn't make me you piss yourself."

"Zabini!"

"What?"

"What are you yelling about?"

"Oh. Yeah. _Lumos_. That."

"Oh my God."

"_Holy fucking -_"

"I read about these!"

Both Draco and Blaise turned to Hermione, torn between exasperation and bemusement. "You _read_ about that _thing_?"

"Mrs Figg had books about it. You were reading it, Blaise, that book you were looking at in my apartment, _Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology_. It's all about things that don't exist, remember? Creatures that are thought not to be real, at least by non-magical people."

"Muggles."

"Them, yes. But it isn't a rat, Draco, you were right."

"I noticed," the blonde hissed. He hated rats, actually, he hated quite a lot of things. But this _thing_ was like a rat with bizarre wriggling spines on its' back. "But what _is_ it?"

"Oh. The book called it a Murtlap. Supposedly they used to exist in coastal areas."

"Coastal?"

"Why are you suddenly pleased?"

"This tunnel ends at the coast. Well. Close to it. Or at least this part of it does. Come on, move faster, if we're almost there -"

"_Don't step on the -_"

"Fuck!"

"- Murtlap. Ouch." Hermione winced in sympathy. "Are you alright? Can you walk?"

"I'm _fine_." Draco was not, in fact, fine. A blinding pain had shot up his leg, something he'd never felt before. Even being chased by guards, ramming headfirst into a wall, being attacked by a muggle who thought himself superior, none of them felt like tiny daggers stabbing into his foot.

"Malfoy."

"_What_, Zabini?"

"You are bleeding. You do realise that, don't you?"

"It fucking _bit_ me. Of course I'm bleeding!"

"You should sit down for a moment. I'm serious, Draco. I don't know what will happen if you just let it fester."

"Fester? Hermione, it isn't infected."

"So far as you know. Its bite could be poisonous, a tooth could be lodged inside it, the spines could be toxic. Face it, you've got no clue."

"Do you even know how to be optimistic?"

"Optimism isn't going to save us, Draco, so sit down."

"On the Murtlap?"

He said it to be resentful, but it succeeded in giving her a second of pause. She sighed, shaking her head. "Blaise, help him walk, will you? Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe they don't like sunlight."

"We're in _England_. It'll be raining anyway."

"_Blaise Zabini_, you help him walk this second or I will show you exactly what my understanding of dark magic is."

"Whoa, no need to get violent, I'll help him. But one of you owes me."

"For Gods' sake, would you stop with your damn favours?"

"You get real shitty when you're in pain, Malfoy," the Italian sneered. Despite his hostility, he did move to support the other wizard. He wasn't stupid, after all; he did recognise that the bizarre couple he was travelling with was his only chance to get out of London alive. He was so close now; there was virtually no good reason to turn his back on them now. Not when the exit was less than a kilometre away.

Daylight was blinding after two days in the dark of the tunnel, and like Hermione had hoped, not a drop of rain fell. Still the sky was dark, clotted with something heavier than cloud.

"Smoke," Hermione hissed, tightening her grip on her stolen wand.

"What burned?" Blaise was dumbfounded. Why would their miraculous escape route end in flame? If it hadn't been found out, then -

Oh.

Draco, already pale and still in pain from the Murtlap bite, growled aloud. He hunched his shoulders and leaned away from Blaise, hissing in pain. Both wizards lurched forward, to a the fringes of the largest pool of ashes they would see in their lifetimes.

"The muggles did this."

"What is it?"

"It's a stop partway through, that's all. A - what are they called? Way-stop? It's one of those. A way-stop for witches, wizards and other magical people, things fleeing London. It's supposed to be anonymous. Undiscovered. _Safe_."

"Somebody found it."

"_Obviously_."

"Draco, don't get mad at Blaise. Seriously, just don't bother. It isn't worth it. Let me look at the bite now. Please."

"No. I have to check -"

"Check what?"

"That they got out! This place should be safe for people like us, don't you get it? If they got to this -"

"Who lived here? Who watched them?"

"The Weasleys. I guess. It's a servants' property. The family is huge, the muggles they serve don't want them sleeping in the house. Six...seven kids. I think most of them are gone."

"What are their names?"

"Um. Molly, Arthur, they're the parents. The kids... a set of twins. Uh, Ron, he's my age. And Ginny. She's...well. Unique."

"You don't know the others?"

"I don't remember their names, no. I've never even _met_ them, now, have I?"

"How should I know?" she snapped sharply, then cleared her throat. "Excuse me. Sit down, Draco. Blaise will look for whatever's left. Now let me look at the bite."

This time, he didn't argue. He stayed silent, flinching as she ran her fingers over the open wound, worse than he'd thought it was in the cave. The pain was sharp now, distracting. He stopped thinking about what the loss of the Weasley's would mean for the networks' efforts.

Then Blaise came back, his normally dark face pale, saying it all without the need for words. Someone's body lay among the ashes.

"Somebody is going to pay."


End file.
